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Address Overfitting with L1 Regularization in Regression

Last updated: Mar 29, 2026

Quick Overview

This question evaluates understanding of model overfitting, high-dimensional linear regression issues, and regularization concepts, specifically L1 (Lasso) sparsity and complexity control.

  • medium
  • Google
  • Machine Learning
  • Data Scientist

Address Overfitting with L1 Regularization in Regression

Company: Google

Role: Data Scientist

Category: Machine Learning

Difficulty: medium

Interview Round: Technical Screen

##### Scenario You fit a linear regression with 500 predictors but only 600 observations. ##### Question a) What issue is likely to occur? b) Why does it happen? c) Explain how L1 regularization can mitigate it. ##### Hints Think over-fitting and coefficient shrinkage.

Quick Answer: This question evaluates understanding of model overfitting, high-dimensional linear regression issues, and regularization concepts, specifically L1 (Lasso) sparsity and complexity control.

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Google
Jul 12, 2025, 6:59 PM
Data Scientist
Technical Screen
Machine Learning
9
0

Linear Regression with Many Predictors and Few Observations

Scenario

You fit an ordinary least squares (OLS) linear regression with 500 predictors (features) and 600 observations (rows).

Questions

  1. What issue is likely to occur?
  2. Why does it happen?
  3. How can L1 regularization (Lasso) mitigate it?

Solution

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